While Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is often viewed as a factor that pushed the United States toward a Civil War over the issue of slavery, the impact of the novel has carried on more than 150 years after the Civil War. Today, the phrase "Uncle Tom" is still used as a derogatory word for African Americans. It's often used to describe someone who betrays the African American community or someone who is too submissive to white people in a position of power.

The phrase is sometimes given to famous musicians, athletes, and other African Americans with a platform to speak on social issues who don't use that platform to shine a light on the systemic racism that still exists. Even Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks who went about things in a nonviolent fashion were given label of "Uncle Tom" because of their passive form of resistance of Jim Crow laws.

However, one could argue that the phrase "Uncle Tom" has been taken out of context from Stowe's novel. In the book, Stowe writes that Tom has a "grave and steady good sense" while giving him the physical description of "a large, broad-chested, powerfully-made man." Moreover, he doesn't betray his fellow slaves in the novel. At one point, he endures a whipping from his master rather than give away the location of two slaves who fled.

The issue is that the play Uncle Tom's Cabin, which remained popular for decades following the Civil War, depicted the character as more submissive. That version of Tom became more sentimental than strong, leading to negative connotations being associated with the phrase "Uncle Tom."

Despite how the phrase "Uncle Tom" has changed connotations over the last 150 years, it remains part of the lasting legacy of Stowe's novel. One can't use the phrase "Uncle Tom" without knowing that it's a reference to one of the most important depictions of slavery ever written.

As the answer above well expresses, Uncle Tom's Cabin's most direct importance was its contribution to the Civil War. The book was a sensation in this country, a runaway bestseller that led to cries for the immediate abolition of slavery. Abraham Lincoln supposedly said that Stowe was the "little lady" who started a great war. That was an exaggeration, but her novel's contribution to an increased clamor for abolition is not disputed.

Before the novel, many sympathetic whites had supported the gradual withering away of slavery over time, thinking its demise inevitable. Most whites didn't engage imaginatively enough with the institution of slavery to put themselves in the place of a slave. Part of Stowe's genius, however, was to show how cruel the system could be even under well-intentioned masters. Only gradually does her novel arrive at the barbarism of Simon Legree. Stowe, therefore, was so successful at depicting slavery's inherent inhumanity that any delay in ending it began to feel intolerable. This contributed to the polarization that led to war.

Less well known is the book's impact in Europe. According to David S. Reynolds in Mightier Than the Sword, not only was Uncle Tom's Cabin the most influential novel ever published in America, it was also the best-selling novel across Europe during the nineteenth century. Initially it was banned in Russia out of fear it would inflame passions about serfdom, although French and German translations were smuggled in. Later, according to Reynolds, it contributed to the Tsar's decision to free the serfs.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was important because it helped to bring on the Civil War.  President Lincoln is supposed to have said (though this is probably apocryphal) to Harriet Beecher Stowe “So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.”  Even if this is not true, it shows how people believed that Stowe’s book helped to cause the Civil War.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin increased opposition to slavery in the North.  Most Northerners were not all that concerned about the plight of slaves before the book.  It is true that most Northerners wanted to keep slavery confined to the South, but most of them were not interested in abolishing slavery.  They looked at slavery more in terms of its effect on whites in the North.

With Stowe’s book, however, this changed.  Her book encouraged white people to think of slaves as real human beings and to look at the impact that the system of slavery had on them.  It encouraged them to think about whether slavery was really moral.  As people in the North came to question the morality of slavery more strongly, they became more inclined to fight to end the practice.

At the same time, the book helped make the South angrier at the North.  They felt that the book was a distortion of the truth. They felt that people who believed in the book could not possibly treat them (the Southerners) fairly.  This helped increase sectional discord and helped to cause the Civil War.

What was the significance of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Uncle Tom's Cabin was an extraordinarily important novel in the nineteenth century. It was the best-selling novel of the century in both the United States and in Europe. Not only is it credited with bringing the abolition movement to a new pitch of intensity in the call for the immediate end to slavery in the United States, it is credited with ending serfdom (a form of slavery) in Russia (see David S. Reynolds Mightier than the Sword).

Uncle Tom's Cabin spawned popular stage productions that visited small towns in the U.S., and, through a children's version of the novel, influenced young people well into the twentieth century. Charles Dickens, who also liked to write about social issues, said he wished he had written it.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is unabashedly a novel of sentiment. By creating sympathetic slaves, such as Eliza, who must make a dangerous journey across ice to save her four-year-old son from being sold to the strong and Christian Uncle Tom, the novel depicts slavery as seen from the point of view of the slave. Stowe made the plight of the slave real and relatable to white people, who could easily imagine themselves in the same position and suffering the same harm as Stowe's enslaved characters. Her novel is a textbook example of a way a work of literature can have significant social and political impact.

What was the significance of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Uncle Tom's Cabin was a book written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852.  The publication of the book, and the response to it, are credited with helping to bring about the Civil War.  In fact, Abraham Lincoln is supposed to have called Stowe the "little woman who wrote the book that made this great war."  Whether he actually said it or not, this sums up the way the book is seen.

Stowe's book made many Northerners feel very angry about slavery and the South.  It made them feel a great deal of sympathy for the plight of slaves such as the ones portrayed in the book.  Because of this, it became a huge bestseller.  This wave of support made people in the South angry and distrustful.  These reactions to the book helped to drive the North and South farther apart, making the Civil War more likely to occur.

What was the significance of the book Uncle Tom's Cabin?

In some ways, Uncle Tom's Cabin was a reflection of a certain point of view at a certain time. Its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was an abolitionist, and she, like many other anti-slavery activists in the North, was angry at the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which, among other things, required Northerners to return escaped slaves. The act turned many Northerners who had not thought much about slavery against the institution, because they thought Southerners, despite all their talk of states rights, were forcing them to support slavery.

In this atmosphere, Uncle Tom's Cabin was an incendiary book. It portrayed slavery as brutal and dehumanizing, and it vividly, sometimes with a great deal of melodrama, portrayed the ordeal that many escapees endured to gain their freedom. Chapter Nine of the book specifically highlights the injustice of the Fugitive Slave law, as it portrays Senator Bird, having voted for the act in order to preserve national unity, ultimately choosing to violate it to help Eliza and Harry escape. Upon finding out that he voted for the law, his wife chastises him:

You ought to be ashamed, John!…It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do!

The book, then, is not just intended to expose the horrors of slavery, it is intended as a call to action and an appeal to morality. While the book is often melodramatic, maudlin, and patronizing to blacks (many scholars and writers, including James Baldwin, have been very critical of its treatment of African-Americans) it also did much to drum up support for the abolitionist, or at least the Free Soil cause. Abraham Lincoln once referred to Stowe as the lady who started the "big war," and it was the book's effect on popular opinion about slavery that he had in mind.

How does Uncle Tom's Cabin play an important role in history?

Boy, did it ever! Robert Levine writes about the various vehement responses to the novel in his article, "Uncle Tom's Cabin in Frederick Douglass' Paper: An Analysis of Reception."

Levine says that free Northern blacks were "outraged and desparing over th adoption of the Compromise of 1850's Fugitive Slave Law" (72). They regarded it "as a godsend destined to mobilize white sentiment against slavery just when resistance to the southern forces was urgently needed" (72).

Frederick Douglass, the great civil rights leader, regarded the novel as elevating the cause and importance of literacy (78).

The impact of the novel at the time was undeniably powerful. It is said that upon meeting Stowe, Abraham Lincoln remarked, "So you're the little woman who started this great war!"

The post-civil war era did not look so favorably on the novel. Chief among the complaints was the fact that a well-to-do white woman was writing about the lives of African-Americans. Others found some of the melodrama off-putting. Still more found, and continue to find, Tom's character to be an example of horrific submission.

Like it or hate it, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has had an undeniable influence on the course of our history.

What impact did Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe have on American history?

"So you're the little lady who started this great big war," Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, referring to her 1852 novel, and the role it had played in the beginning of the War Between the States in 1861.  Stowe wrote the novel, which was a vicious attack on the institution of slavery, slaveowners, and their overseers, as a reaction to/protest of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which was passed as part of a package of compromise legislation that admitted California to the United States and specified how territory acquired from war with Mexico would be handled.  The horrific story of a kind, elderly slave named Uncle Tom who is ultimately killed by his murderous owner, Simon Legree, galvanized public opinion in the North about the evils of slavery; that is to say, abolitionists felt validated, and many who had been on the fence about the issue joined the abolitionist cause amidst the outrage.  Southerners rose to their own defense, explaining that slavery in the South was the same thing, or even better than, the working conditions of employees in factories up north.  By the time Stowe penned her work, the days of compromise were coming to a close, and it would be less than a decade before the first shots would be fired at Fort Sumter. 

Why was Uncle Tom's Cabin so significant?

Legend has it that when Lincoln met Stowe and credited her as being the "little lady" who essentially started the Civil War, it served as a testament to the enduring power of literature. Stowe's work is one of the best examples of how writing is never "just words." Uncle Tom's Cabin demonstrates that words matter.

Stowe understood the context in which she wrote her novel. She recognized the issue of slavery and its implication in the development of the nation. Stowe embraced her position as an abolitionist. The growth of her work cannot be divorced from the social context that it reflects. Stowe's work is the embodiment of her contribution to the cause of social activism. In this light, her work affirms how literature is powerful. It is more than just writing or the creation of art, elements which are powerful in their own right. Rather, literature is meant to commit individuals to a particular point of view and provide a frame of meaning. Literature can address who individuals are and what they can do. It seeks to transform what can be from what is. Stowe's work, the reaction both to it and against it, and its place in American literature and history are all examples of the power that literature possesses.